In a recent interview with USGamer, Animal Crossing: New Leaf director Aya Kyogoku fielded several questions about the upcoming release of Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival for Wii U and Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer for Nintendo 3DS. Nintendo fans were notably critical of the Nintendo E3 presentation that revealed these two games, as many expected to see the Wii U version of Animal Crossing on the table.

Perhaps the most notable statement to come from the interview is that both Animal Crossing spin-off games were created to maximize amiibo potential for the series.

Both Happy Home Designer and Amiibo Festival are spinoffs of the Animal Crossing series, and that’s what we’re developing them as. One thing that we focused on was, “What kind of game play experience can we create using Amiibo figures and Amiibo cards?” We also went in with the approach that we didn’t want to be limited in the scope of what we can do based on what Animal Crossing in the past has been.

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival received quite a bit of negative reaction online from fans, who felt like it was Mario Party repackaged with an Animal Crossing skin over the top. Kyogoku is quick to add that’s not the case for Amiibo Festival, as there’s less focus on the mini-games like Mario Party.

One of the main tenets of Mario Party is that you’re playing a board game and in between those board game moves, you play a mini-game and compete, and that’s a focus. For Animal Crossing, the focus is actually playing the board game within the village of Animal Crossing, so it’s not really focused on the mini games.

If you’d like to read the rest of the interview with Kyogoku, be sure to check it out here. What do you think of the two Animal Crossing games Nintendo has revealed this year? Will you be picking up either one of them, or any of the amiibo figures?